Pinterest just showed me a spatula/spoonish-shaped thing for applying butt cream on a baby. My jaw fell open. Are parents these day too paranoid to touch baby butts that need cleaning? Or are they leaving diapers for longer periods of time because of cost, so that diaper rash is more common?

I admit my baby caring days are very last century with cloth diapers, diaper pails, and such. I used the disposable diapers on trips or outings, but for the most part, cloth diapers were my normal go-to. But that was just me.

I also had a neighbor that objected to my youngest’s daily summer air nap. I used to put him in a small crib in the carport on nice days, totally without clothing. I’d be there on a lounger reading a book and my neighbor who was way younger than me, would come over and complain that my baby was naked. Every single time!

I finally asked her why she was looking. It was because she could see his “private parts.” So I asked her again why she was looking. She had no good answer. She never complained again. I still don’t know why a naked baby in a carport 30 feet from her house triggered her.

I did find out later that she was from the Wisconsin version of Pennsyltucky, so that might have been the reason. There are a lot of small towns up north that are just like the insular towns in other rural areas of the country.

But back to the butt spatula/spoon thing — they come in colors and multiple sizes. There’s what looks like a suction cup on the handle end so the thing stands upright on a flat surface. You can buy sets. It’s the future of baby care where infants are handled by machines and left in “pods” until they’re large enough to be put in creches with other pod children wearing headsets wired to their brains for “education.”

The way things are going with the current government, this might happen. 1984, Brave New World, and The Handmaids Tale were not meant to be blueprints for the future. But here we are.